Case studies
A deeper music — Hampton Park Secondary College
A conversation about the music learning program at Hampton Park Secondary College is a little like looking at an orchestral score: there are many parts and each has its important voice, but all are lending themselves to a unified whole – the score, the plan, the music.
Planning is at the core and is the driver of the school’s music learning program, and is something that is constantly evolving through a cycle of program design, implementation, testing and evaluation of the learning process.
A highly structured, highly planned approach like this may lead one to think that the focus of the music learning program is on theoretical knowledge and mastery of classical music techniques, but this school focuses on learning driven by students, and what students are interested in is the music they like to listen to – rock, pop, indie.
This autonomy for musical learning to be driven by students is really important in a school of 1250 students, including students from over 65 different cultures. Students come from Afghani, Indian, Islander, New Zealand and Sudanese backgrounds – and across all of those cultures it is clear that the families value music.
Cultural boundaries blend easily in the music classroom. Kids form new social groups based on expertise and musical skills, in addition to friendship groups.
Musical Futures is used extensively in the Hampton Park music program, a program focused on enabling young people to choose and create the kind of music they want to make.
The Leading Music Teacher says of the program:
Kids know where to find the songs they want, where to find the chords or charts, where the resources are to learn the song. There is a real focus on independent learning, working at a task for an extended period of time but within a given process.
Some big thinking is going on at the school at the moment about that process – a framework that allows for a great deal of autonomy for the students to pursue and drive their own learning. In a way, the structure is creating a space for freedom in the music program.
A complete redesign is happening. We are working with a consultant to look at the curriculum design process. It’s a learning-by-design approach. Teachers begin by interrogating the standard and identifying the key skills, knowledge and understandings relevant to our students. They work backwards from there in order to create the most effective and cohesive learning sequence.
Our approach to curriculum implementation has three distinct components:
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A Curriculum Map – outlining the relevant Victorian Curriculum F–10: Music content descriptions and achievement standards, big ideas, enduring understandings, essential questions, skills and knowledge, and formative and summative assessment.
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The Common Assessment Task (CAT) – a three-tiered assessment specifying for students what is required of them in order demonstrate their learning at a C, B or A level. The structure of the summative assessment is based on Bloom’s Taxonomy and allows students to demonstrate their understanding at the Applying (level C), Analysing (level B) and Evaluating/Creating levels (level A); and, the accompanying Instructional Rubric.
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Learning Sequence – this outlines the various instructional practices, learning opportunities and resources teachers will deliver and students will access in order to learn and master the skills, as outlined in the Curriculum Map, and which will be assessed in the Common Assessment Task. It sounds complex, but what does it look like in the classroom? It looks as diverse as the cultures the students come from.
We want to see multiple approaches to interpreting that curriculum. The learning has to be relevant and meaningful to real life – to life-long learning. Being a musician means acknowledging what you do and don’t know, taking risks, building confidence, exploring through lots of different types of repertoire, and being engaged from bottom to top.
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